The news that had already been circling around about the cancelation of the 2014 Asia Series became official this week after the WBSC and its President, Riccardo Fraccari (World Baseball Softball Confederation) and the rest of the organizers of the tournament met in South Korea. Shadowing the decision to cancel this international event was the fact that this year in the CPBL (Chinese Professional Baseball League) went through a number of key changes took place, which included the resignation of the Commissioner of the league, Jenn Tai Hwang. This turned out to be just one of the reasons the Asia Series was canceled, one of a number of which included scheduling conflicts with the Asian Games held in South Korea and the MLB All Stars vs. the Samurai Japan of the NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball League) series which will be scheduled in November.
The team that was suppose to represent Europe this year was T&A San Marino after they took the European Champions Cup over the Rimini Pirates two games to one back at the beginning of August. This would have been just the second year that a European Club would have been represented at the Asia Series with UnipolSai Bologna making the trip just a year ago where they went 0 and 2 in their only 2 games played, dropping their games to both the Corea Samsung Lions and the UniPresident Lions. Last year’s winners of the Asia Series were the Australians out of the Australian Baseball League (Canberra).
The organizing parties are now expected to meet with 2015 on their minds, with the goal of making this international tournament a global event for the championship clubs of all the main leagues across the world.
